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26/03/2025: Paper on the Screening practises in Europe

As it was announced, this is the first paper on the Hearing Screening practices in Europe, which was published in the Journal Children.

Abstract:

Background: The reported data on European universal neonatal hearing screening (UNHS)
practices tend to be scarce, despite the fact that the European Union project, EUScreen, collected
unofficial data from 38 collaborating European institutions. The objectives of this systematic review
were as follows: (a) to identify the most recent (in a 20-year span) literature information about UNHS
programs in Europe and (b) to provide data on the procedures used to assess the population, the
intervention policies, and on the estimated prevalence of congenital hearing loss with emphasis on the
bilateral hearing loss cases.

Methods: Queries were conducted via the Pubmed, Scopus and Google
Scholar databases for the time period of 2004–2024. The Mesh terms used were “OAE”, “Universal
Neonatal Hearing Screening”, “congenital hearing loss” and “well babies”. Only research articles and
review papers of European origin were considered good candidates. The standard English language
filter was not used, in order to identify information from non-English-speaking scientific communities
and groups.

Results: Very few data and reports were identified in the literature search. Eleven
manuscripts were identified corresponding to eight UNHS programs. Except in Poland, most of the
data refer to regional and not national programs. The screening coverage estimates of all programs
exceed 90%; infants were mostly assessed by a three-stage protocol (TEOAE + TEOAE + AABR),
followed by a clinical ABR test. The average prevalence (i.e., from well babies AND NICU infants) of
bilateral hearing loss ranged from 0.5 to 20.94 per 1000 (Zurich sample). Infants presenting unilateral
or bilateral hearing losses were first rehabilitated by hearing aids and consequently (>15 mo) by
cochlear implants.

Conclusions: Even though UNHS programs are well-established clinical practices
in the European States, the amount of information in the literature about these programs is surprising
low. The existing data in the timespan 2004–2024 corroborate the international UNHS data in terms of
coverage and bilateral hearing loss prevalence, but there is a strong need to supplement the existing
information with the latest developments, especially in the area of hearing loss rehabilitation.

You can download the paper from here: